50% customs fees? I feel like it is too much. Here in Slovakia it is 8,5% plus VAT.
I honestly believe Spyderco sales would increase significantly in Europe if they manage to keep the selling price in line with the USA selling price.
I don't think that's exactly what's happening. What I meant was that as far as I understand Spyderco won't sell directly to dealers in the UK, only to the distributor.I hadn't considered that mrsp dictates the prices that importers charge, here in the UK. I'd love a Stretch 2, but at the equivalent of 360 USD its never going to happen!
Speaking of the UK, the applicable tax is VAT which is 20%. I think I'd be pretty happy if I could buy a US product at only 20% above the US selling price. However do you not have sales taxes as well? If so then presumably part of that US price would be sales tax, which shouldn't be levied on goods exported, and in turn should make the difference less than 20%.How would that be possible with the local governments there grabbing what they do?
Opinels and SAKs sell for peanuts on this side of the Atlantic too and appeal to people here who'd never consider spending even the Amazon price of a Spyderco for a knife.Sales taxes aren't *that* high as a %, but they are applied to what are anyway high retail prices. People in Europe buy Victorinox and Opinel because they are a fraction of the price, and unless that changes, Spyderco knives will remain niche products, rather than widely known and used tools.
Who, I suspect, are paying the same price as distributors in the USA, although they probably do pay higher shipping costs. The taxes and other fees they are charged by their own governments may be based on MSRP, but I'm pretty sure that, if Spyderco lowered MSRP by 25% while keeping distributor cost the same, the retail prices charged by overseas dealers would not drop significantly.I don't think that's exactly what's happening. What I meant was that as far as I understand Spyderco won't sell directly to dealers in the UK, only to the distributor.
I'd like to know where you found a Nirvana for $250...I'm all in at that price.
Eventually all internet sales will be taxed. The government feels that all money is theirs and sometimes it just takes time before they get their due. Bureaucracies don't get smaller and governments don't seem to ever lower taxes once they have been raised. The general rule is to go higher with taxes. Europe is mostly just further down the road than the US.
joe
Opinels and SAKs sell for peanuts on this side of the Atlantic too and appeal to people here who'd never consider spending even the Amazon price of a Spyderco for a knife.
Who, I suspect, are paying the same price as distributors in the USA, although they probably do pay higher shipping costs. The taxes and other fees they are charged by their own governments may be based on MSRP, but I'm pretty sure that, if Spyderco lowered MSRP by 25% while keeping distributor cost the same, the retail prices charged by overseas dealers would not drop significantly.
yes quite true Joe, a case of "the bureaucracy expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."
I've heard a lot of claims about perversion on the internet, but that "perversion" of the "normal" supply chain is a concept called "just in time delivery". Inventory is to be eliminated as much as possible in the modern economy. The internet has simply adopted a common business practice.IMHO, it's more a question of the internet perverting the normal supply chain by severely reducing "overhead", or removing it from the equation entirely.